Program Notes and Episode Extras – Episode One

Cuong—Next Week's Trees (World Premiere)

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Program

Viet Cuong—Next Week’s Trees
Donato Cabrera, Music Director
Viet Cuong, Composer-in-Residence

Music inspired by Mary Oliver’s Walking to Oak-Head Pond, And Thinking of the Ponds I Will Visit in the Next Days and Weeks.

“In this particular time of great loss, I was deeply inspired by Oliver’s words—words that are a gentle reminder of the uncertainty of the future, the confident hope of the present, and the propulsive force of life that drives us through any doubt that a new day will arrive.”—Viet Cuong, California Symphony Composer-in-Residence, 2020-23

Program Notes

“Next Week’s Trees exudes an altogether Mary Oliver-ish optimism, a sturdiness so characteristic of a writer whose daily walks through the New England countryside provided no end of inspiration, a world of birds and butterflies, mushrooms and mosses, of egrets and peonies and fish.”

Read the rest of Scott’s program notes for Next Week’s Trees.

Further Reading